After eight years of inactivity, this scrappy New Jersey band reunited in 2005, to the delight of the countless emo kids who’ve singled out Lifetime as a primary influence. One of those kids is Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz; he’s such a fan that he signed the group to his Decaydance label last year. FOB and Panic! at the Disco (another Decaydance act) have taken emo’s ascent to the Top 40 as a mandate to experiment, edging away from the music’s basement-show roots and toward an embrace of fusion and theatricality. Wizened underground denizens who trust MTV as much as they do the CIA, the guys in Lifetime demonstrate no such interest in breaking form on this CD, their first release since re-forming: these 11 rave-ups sound exactly like what you would’ve heard at an all-ages gig in New Brunswick back in the mid ’90s. Is that a bummer? Only for those who’ve lost their taste for the ritualized pleasures of the basement-show existence. I mean, if even Pete Wentz can’t find an outfit better at doing this stuff, it probably doesn’t exist.

Rock school Pete Wentz wanted the kids to curse along with the chorus.

The emo corps Some young bands dream of the day they’ll write that one beautiful, searing bundle of truth that persuades parents to have kids, inspires armies to stop fighting, and conjures puppies and kittens from thin air.

DEVO | SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY | July 01, 2010 Given the theory of de-evolution these Ohio brainiacs began expounding more than 30 years ago, it makes a sad kind of sense that Devo's first album since 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps offers such a charmless, base-level version of the band's synth-addled new wave.